America isn’t just failing to reunite families—it is making it as hard as possible.

The July 10 deadline for the Trump administration to reunite detained families with under 5 years old has passed. Predictably, and infuriatingly, they failed to . It's predictable because the administration repeatedly tried to get the deadline extended, mostly on grounds that they knew they couldn't meet it. And it's infuriating because while Trump eagerly rushed into his "zero tolerance" and family-separation policies, it's been clear since the beginning that his administration had no plans or methods for reuniting families once they were forced apart.

It's not hard to conclude that family reunification isn't a priority. The Department of Homeland Security has claimed it has a database of separated children and parents but has never . has said that the procedure for reuniting families is "don't come to our country illegally" in the first place. And now, as the Daily Beast reports, government officials have told at least four immigrant women that to get their children back, they'll have to pay for their own DNA tests to prove that they're related:

The tests are the latest ad hoc effort by the Trump administration to reunite families it had separated—in some cases because authorities took documents from adults proving they are related to their children. The tests are being administered by a private contractor on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees the care and housing of children. HHS has refused to name the contractor, which may be a violation of federal law.

HHS replied by claiming that they provide DNA tests free of charge, but reports from both the director for the immigrant shelter where the women are staying and an immigration lawyer who works with the shelter contradict that. The women are reportedly being told to pay between $700 and $800.

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This corresponds with other stories of the government demanding to release immigrant children from custody. Family members already in the U.S. who attempt to sponsor detained children have been told they must pay hefty airplane tickets. A construction worker in Los Angeles, for example, tried to take in a 14-year-old relative taken from her mother when crossing the border. The girl would only be released into the custody of a family member—and only if that family member paid $1,800 to fly her and an escort from Houston. Immigrant and youth-rights advocates have accused the government of trying to raise barriers that make it impossible for typically poor people to free their family members.

As more stories like these come out, calls to Immigration and Customs Enforcement are growing louder and more mainstream. Some Democrats in Congress are readying legislation to eliminate the agency. While abolishing ICE, a division of the Department of Homeland Security that's barely 15 years old, would cut the legs out of the unaccountable secret police force that Trump has empowered, it would only address one aspect of the administration's ongoing abuse of immigrants. The bills for DNA tests, for example, aren't even being handled by DHS—that's under Health and Human Services.

But the fact that calls to abolish ICE have grown is a sign that politicians are waking up to people's demands for a just and humane immigration system. It's the first step in turning Congress away from answering only to corporate interests and white supremacists.

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You know for being the beacon of freedom to the world the US gov. Sure does love to hold kids hostage.

Trump: Illegals get out!
*takes kids away*
Illegals: okay okay we’ll leave just please give me back my kids!!!
Trump: No, You leave we’ll keep your kids. Also I dont know who or where they exactly are.
Illegals: please I just want my family back.
Trump: that’ll be $800. I have no pity for you criminals

.....So instead of just deporting the families and doing immigration reform proper to lessen the stress at the border, we now hold parents and children separately, indefinitely, deport the families back w/o their kids while losing some of the kids in the system in the process and now we charging these families, who probably don't have $800 to speak of, to get their kids back, only to deport them with less money and less of a chance to seek a legal route to citizenship....

.....So instead of just deporting the families and doing immigration reform proper to lessen the stress at the border, we now hold parents and children separately, indefinitely, deport the families back w/o their kids while losing some of the kids in the system in the process and now we charging these families, who probably don't have $800 to speak of, to get their kids back, only to deport them with less money and less of a chance to seek a legal route to citizenship....

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Brillant put them to work doing slave labor so that they can make the 800 dollars needed to get their kids back lets say 10 cents an hour.

.....So instead of just deporting the families and doing immigration reform proper to lessen the stress at the border, we now hold parents and children separately, indefinitely, deport the families back w/o their kids while losing some of the kids in the system in the process and now we charging these families, who probably don't have $800 to speak of, to get their kids back, only to deport them with less money and less of a chance to seek a legal route to citizenship....

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I feel like this administration is all about creating unnecessary work and then blaming it on the Democrats.

I feel like this administration is all about creating unnecessary work and then blaming it on the Democrats.

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Well it works because they've created this whole narrative that the media is unfair to them, the government is secretly run by a collection of Washington insiders in some sort of Deep State group, and that the only people that their base can trust is who Trump tells them to.

As recently as last week I've seen someone trying to connect the missing immigrants to pizza gate.

To be honest I'm half expecting a "the administration is regretful and had no knowledge of the mass grave located by XYZ facility" story to break one of these days.

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I was expecting more of a "guards at this facility have been passing teenage girls around like a tub of popcorn and X number of them might be pregnant" or "guards ask women for sexual favors for preferential treatment".

One thing you could never claim about 2016 to present is that it's been boring.

.....So instead of just deporting the families and doing immigration reform proper to lessen the stress at the border, we now hold parents and children separately, indefinitely, deport the families back w/o their kids while losing some of the kids in the system in the process and now we charging these families, who probably don't have $800 to speak of, to get their kids back, only to deport them with less money and less of a chance to seek a legal route to citizenship....

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I would imagine what adds onto this being a major issue of the administration's conduct is that they are forcing citizens from other countries to pay this amount of money for DNA tests in what essentially amounts to extortion.

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I have come to turn "'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.